Bill Tarmey, the actor, who has died aged 71, was best known for his portrayal
of the work-shy Jack Duckworth in the ITV soap opera Coronation Street.

As the gruff, henpecked husband of Vera Duckworth (Elizabeth Dawn) for more than a quarter of a century, Tarmey became half of one of the most famous couples on British television. He first appeared as Jack in 1979, and played the character without a break between 1983 and 2010.

A large, emotional man, Tarmey originally played Jack Duckworth as a gold-medallioned Lothario; in middle age, however, Jack was notable for his broken spectacles, held together by sticking-plaster and not abandoned until 1997 . “Am I like Jack?” Tarmey once mused. “Well, I’ve never put a bet on in my life, I drink Guinness not bitter, and I’m not — repeat not — married to Vera.”

As portrayed by Tarmey and Dawn, the bickering Duckworths inherited the mantle of Stan and Hilda Ogden as the Street’s most ramshackle couple: he the perpetual layabout, she the formidable, but ultimately forgiving, scold.

Despite his success in the role, however, the untrained Tarmey used to tremble with fright when on set, and had to have his lines pasted to the sides of cereal packets and inside sugar bowls.

After a spell during which he scraped a living as an idle window cleaner, Tarmey’s character eventually replaced Fred Gee (played by Fred Feast) in his dream job as the pot man at the Rovers Return pub at the corner of Coronation Street. Feast had proved a difficult man to manage, but the show’s producer at the time, Bill Podmore, noted that with Tarmey “there’s no trouble, no nonsense”.

Like his screen wife Liz Dawn and Lynne Perrie (the poisonous Ivy Tilsley), Tarmey emerged from the tough school of the northern club and cabaret circuits. His early ambition had been to become a professional singer, and while working in the building trade by day he took bookings as a singer with show bands and at recording sessions.

Bill Tarmey was born William Piddington on April 4 1941 at Ardwick, a working-class area of Manchester. His father, also William, was killed driving an ambulance during the Second World War at the Battle of Arnhem, and on leaving school Bill was apprenticed to his stepfather, Robert Cleworth, becoming an asphalt spreader in the building trade. Later, out of respect for his two father figures, he changed his name to Cleworth-Piddington.

He had met his future wife, Ali, at a local youth group in east Manchester when he was 14. After their marriage in 1962 she ran a grocery and hardware shop which did so well that in 1968 Tarmey gave up his building work to run it with her. In the meantime, he began to be offered singing dates in local clubs.

It was while he was working at a club in Stockport that he was informed that his real name was “too long”. The owner decided to bill him as William Tarmey, apparently a nod to the American singer Mel Torme.

On the advice of a friend who had worked as an extra in television dramas, Tarmey picked up similar work of his own and graduated to small speaking parts. He appeared in Crown Court, Strangers, The Glamour Girls and a BBC Play For Today, Thicker Than Water. In Rising Star, he sang with a group called Take Ten, with which he had often appeared in clubs.

He was also offered bit parts in Coronation Street. For some 10 years he featured as an extra in the bar of the Rovers Return, usually throwing darts in the background. Because he lacked any formal training, he turned for help to several Street regulars for advice when his part of Jack Duckworth expanded in the 1980s.

Shortly after making his debut proper as Jack in 1983, Tarmey had a small part in Granada’s production of King Lear, with Laurence Olivier in the title role. Recognising Tarmey from Coronation Street, Olivier exclaimed, as he sat on a nearby horse: “What the bloody hell are you doing here?” “It’s what they call 'experience’, sir,” Tarmey replied.

Throughout his career in Coronation Street, Tarmey continued to work as a singer, releasing several albums of middle-of-the-road songs. His One Voice reached No 16 in 1993.

A heavy smoker, in 2002 he suffered a second serious heart attack (the first had been in 1976, when he was only 35), and his illness was incorporated into the storyline to explain his absence on screen. He also suffered a stroke and underwent a quadruple heart bypass operation.

His professional partnership with Elizabeth Dawn ended with Vera’s death in January 2008, when the actress retired on account of ill health. Tarmey himself retired from the series in November 2010, shortly after publishing his autobiography, Jack Duckworth and Me: My Life on the Street and Other Adventures.